Category Archives: Uncategorized

“The Carolina Parrot”

Audubon (2017) briefly chronicles the life of America’s most famous nature painter and naturalist, John James Audubon (1785 – 1851). It does a reasonable job of getting us inside the man and his motivations, while giving us some lovely glimpses into his famous paintings and engravings. It hits the low points as well as the high points, such as his terrible investment in a steam mill, which basically ate his finances alive, and how he had to travel to Louisiana, hunting to support himself, in search of work, only to be pickpocketed and forced to work as a tutor, while continuing his obsessive painting.

If you don’t mind the voice that reads his letters, it’s not bad at all.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is his observations, late in life, of how the land was changing during his years of observation, from being plush with wildlife, to the effects that man, especially European-derived man, had on the environment wherever he went. Some of those descriptions were quite heart-rending, and really struck a chord with those of us who read in environmental degradation a potential disaster for the human race.

But, then, that’s rather what the Audubon Society is about, isn’t it?

All in all, it’s fairly well done, and if you enjoy Audubon, biographies or birds, see it.

Immunosenescence:

Concerning the Chinese coronavirus, a reader points out …

It’s already here …..

Indeed it is:

A case of the new coronavirus from China has been confirmed in a patient just north of Seattle, federal health officials said Tuesday. The mysterious pneumonia-like illness has killed at least six people and sickened hundreds of others in Asia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. …

The patient in Washington, a resident of Snohomish County, is a man in his 30s. The CDC said he arrived in the United States around Jan. 15 after having visited Wuhan. He hadn’t, however, visited the seafood market where the virus is said to have originated. [NBC News]

So it appears to definitely be inter-human mobile. And here’s a new term for me:

Health officials don’t know how easily the infection spreads between people. One infectious disease expert expressed concern that it could be transmitted through so-called super-spreaders — highly infectious patients able to sicken dozens of people at once.

This is not a carrier, who is someone who spreads a disease but doesn’t suffer from it; super-spreaders are simply more virulent than the general run. Perhaps they provide a more salubrious environment for the pathogen than the average human.

Evidently, Hillary Clinton is still bitter about the 2016 primary:

Four years since their rough Democratic primary battle, Hillary Clinton has not let up on her criticism of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, says of Sanders in a new documentary that “nobody likes him.”

“He was in Congress for years,” Clinton says in the soon-to-be-released four-part Hulu documentary “Hillary,” The Hollywood Reporter said in a report. “He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” [NBC News]

If this was a criticism on substantive issues, it’d be fine, but this is ad hominen and not relevant to the campaign. It makes her look bad.

But, worse, the Bernie Sanders fans, who were already embittered by the 2016 Democratic nominating scandal, as headlined by Rep Wasserman-Schulz, will not be soothed by Clinton’s remarks. If the bitterness is widespread and leads to a Trump re-election, then it won’t be hard to see Clinton as sabotaging the Democratic nominee, if it’s not Sanders, for petty and foolish reasons.

It may be unreasonable, and some might even argue unethical, for the Sanders fans to hold the entire Democratic Party responsible for the actions of Wasserman-Schulz, and even Clinton, but it’s even more unreasonable for Clinton to risk their fury at what they see as their unfair elimination in the 2016 contest. After all, their enthusiasm tends to border on a cult, albeit not as ludicrous as the Trump cult.

And for those who think is all just politics, yes, it is. It doesn’t invalidate the point, which is for the party to find a way to win. Making bitter and irrelevant remarks as a candidate who benefited from a controversial move by an ally who was in charge of the DNC at the time benefits nothing but her outrage, and hurts the chances of beating the man who beat her.

On the other hand, I continue to see a run by an Independent in the Democratic primary as being somewhat silly in itself. Either join the Democrats or don’t take up space in their primary, it’s as simple as that. I have no idea why the Democrats keep putting up with it.

Yeah, software engineers hate it when values start running around outside of their domains.

Regarding the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China, a reader writes:

Ugh. What’s the over/under on when it arrives in the USA? 🙁

No word. But it’s a safe bet that your annual flu shot won’t be of any help.

Here’s a simulation that stretches the mind:

A massive simulation of the universe is digitally recreating the lives of stars, black holes and galaxies.

Richard Bower at Durham University in the UK and his colleagues have created a computer simulation approximately 1 billion light years across, which models tens of thousands of galaxies.

The team started the simulation on Tuesday and it will run continuously for 50 days across 30,000 computer processors developed by tech firm Intel in both Durham and Paris. It is 30 times larger than a previous simulation the team ran in 2015, which led to predictions about the mergers of supermassive black holes. [NewScientist, 23 November, paywall]

And the granularity?

The simulation studies galaxies by breaking them up into blocks of about 3000 light years. One of the team’s objectives is to try to understand rare objects in the universe, such as very distant galaxies that are invisible to telescopes that gather and focus visible light.

The Universe is a big place, to be sure. Estimates of our home galaxy of the Milky Way top out at a diameter of 250,000 light years, but the thickness of the disk is estimated at 2000 light years. Still, unless they’re using the old British definition of billion to be 10¹², it’s a little hard to see this as harboring billions of galaxies. Or am I doing the math wrong?

In any case, I would have found doing this work fascinating. Between the logistical issues and the physics, it seems like a lot of fun.

And it reminds me of the old hypothesis, to which I have a certain inclination, that we are, ourselves, in and of a computer simulation. This is all getting fractal, isn’t it?

And here’s a picture of M-51, a spiral galaxy like our own, since I cannot show a picture of our own home, from NASA:

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Detlef Hartmann; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

President Trump continues to stir the cocktail of emotions on which his voters run:

After excluding House Republicans from his defense team, President Donald Trump announced Monday night that eight of them would serve as his personal warriors.

Republican Reps. Doug Collins (Ga.), Mike Johnson (La.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.), Mark Meadows (N.C.), John Ratcliffe (Texas), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Lee Zeldin (N.Y.) will “serve as part of his team working to combat this hyper-partisan and baseless impeachment,” according to a White House news release Monday.

“Throughout this process, these Members of Congress have provided guidance to the White House team, which was prohibited from participating in the proceedings concocted by Democrats in the House of Representatives,” the release said. [Politico]

With a helping of mendacity, steaming on the side – Trump was invited to participate in the impeachment phase, and turned the opportunity down.

But, back to the point, warrior is an emotional term, connoting sacrifices made for the greater good by the individual, with implications of a particular moral goodness to that composite entity.

The logic is, of course, backwards – there were plenty of Japanese who gave their lives for the greater good of an Imperial Japan, an entity which condoned committing unspeakable atrocities in China, for example – but it, nonetheless, has a strong instinctive appeal, especially for the committed Trump cultist.

Essentially, this role for the Representatives make them into a bulwark against the destruction of the Trump base, and this is necessary because if the public opinion polls take a nose dive from their already-precarious position, the Republican Senators may find the pressure from constituents to find Trump innocent to lessen, and perhaps they would then vote for country over Party.

That’s the fear of Trump and the senior members of his advisors.

I took these hoping to capture the exceptional reflectance of the tree branches, probably enhanced by a layer of ice, but the camera was not up to it. But I still like the bleakness.

NPR:

New information is being reported about the new coronavirus that emerged in China in December and causes respiratory symptoms such as pneumonia — heightening concerns about its potential threat to humans. …

On Monday, Zhong Nanshan, the epidemiologist who leads the committee on the outbreak for China’s National Health Commission, gave a TV interview stating there was evidence of human-to-human transmission.

China’s National Health Commission also confirmed that there has been infection of medical staff.

In combination with the big holiday of the new lunar year, where most people return home to celebrate with families, while some travel out of the country to avoid family, this has the potential to be spread quickly and widely, and if it’s confirmed that it can transfer from person to person and has severe symptoms, this could be a tragic event.

Let’s hope not, but if you don’t like surprises like this, keep an eye on the news.

I just love this Kevin Drum photo – a great composition for us folks with a flaky imagination:

Maybe the robot monster is actually Charlie Brown, about to engage in you-know-what.

The balance of Kevin’s post is here. A fascinating look at the LA Cathedral.

Lawyer George T. Conway III, prominent Trump critic and husband of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, thinks he knows why President Trump’s legal team for his Senate trial, following impeachment in the House, appears to be a patchwork:

Presented without comment. If you’re at work, use headphones or turn the sound down.

While reading through Steve Benen’s post concerning the Trump Administration’s desire to permit American companies to engage in bribery overseas, it occurred to me that Trump adherents might find his post unconvincing, because he doesn’t address the issue in any sort of depth. First, for background, here’s Steve:

In fact, NBC News’ Richard Engel appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show a couple of years ago and highlighted a 2012 quote from Trump, in which the future president said, in reference to FCPA [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act], “Now, every other country goes into these places, and they do what they have to do. It’s a horrible law and it should be changed. I mean, we’re like the policeman for the world. It’s ridiculous.”

The New York Republican didn’t forget about his opposition to the law after taking office. A new book from the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig reports that Trump clashed with then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in early 2017 because the new president wanted to get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump reportedly said at the time.

The same book added that Trump directed Stephen Miller to draft an executive action to repeal the law. (Executive actions cannot simply repeal federal laws, though the president apparently didn’t care.) [Maddowblog]

So let’s talk about how bribery distorts the basics of economic transactions.

First, the use of bribery removes the question of quality from the equation of selling a product, instead substituting the metric, if you will, of the size of the seller’s wallet. If an inferior quality product has a worst case result – it causes the death of a customer – then the blood of that customer is on the hands of both the entity that offered a bribe and the entity that accepted it. If, thank heavens, it does not, the end consumer still must suffer with an inferior product.

Second, the same reasoning as in (1) applies if the briber’s product isn’t really appropriate for the task at hand.

Third, in a corrupt environment, security risks are magnified. Please do not inspect this delivery closely, here’s $10,000. Think about what could be snuck in to the bribed entity’s manufacturing plant. The entire culture of bribery replaces any sense of physical security of the bribed entity with the price tag of those who must be bribed.

Fourth, it has the potential to magnify costs. Simply consider the competitive bidding situation in which the low bid didn’t submit the biggest bribe.

Fifth, crappy inferior products inevitably reflect poorly on those who bribe, and, with enough instances, their country of origin. Does the United States really want to be known for making cheap shit that doesn’t work? The answer had better be Of course not! And, yet, that’s what is at risk here, because the metric isn’t which product is best, but who paid the bribe – rather than exposing it.

Sixth, one bribe leads to another, and they can go up in price.

Seventh, someone in position to take a bribe isn’t necessarily motivated only by money. Maybe he or she is a racist, or doesn’t like your meal choices, or, say, the fact that the salesman offering the bribe has a little golden cross hanging around his neck. Taking focus off the question of price vs quality, one of the most essential equations in all of economics, and replacing it with the arbitrary whims and prejudices of someone in power is an upsetting and unfair way to do business – just like simple bribery, but with factors that are even more difficult to influence.

Eighth? Why, that’s easy. If we repeal the FCPA, what’s to keep that same culture from becoming acceptable RIGHT HERE IN THE UNITED STATES? How many of my readers think it’s perfectly ok to grease the outheld palm in order to get any service at all? Yeah, it’s an awfully small group. Yet, that’s what we’ll face if we decide to repeal the FCPA: A country not based on Law, but on bribes.

This, of course, comes from observed fact that President Trump’s only, not primary but only, metric is money. Money, money, money, screw the national reputation, screw the problems of fixating on money and what other countries might or might not owe us. There’s all that profit we’re not getting because we’re not willing to debase ourselves!

That asinine fixation is a rotten way to run a country, and this issue brings out that fundamental failing into the bright light of day.

Greta Van Susteren suggests that the Presidential debates are testing the wrong things:

Presidential debates are supposed to provide voters with a better understanding of a candidate’s views and how he or she would likely govern. Of course, if you think the job of the president is to make short, snappy decisions without consulting others and without examining all the pros and cons, then the existing debate format probably suits you. If, on the other hand, you think the job of the president is problem-solving, then the debate ought to be exactly that — a problem-solving test.

Smart and successful problem-solving involves considering all the consequences and consulting with others. It is not demonstrated by one’s ability to instantly react to a surprise question with a one-minute answer. After all, no one walks into the Oval Office and says, “Mr. President, you have 60 seconds to address the North Korean nuclear weapons program that has been active for 30 years and has bedeviled the last three presidents for all eight years of their respective terms. The clock starts now.” If we don’t want the Oval Office to operate like Twitter, why do we test our candidates as if it does? [WaPo]

And she’s right, of course. So why did I just shake my head here?

If we want better outcomes in Washington, we must change the vetting process for how our presidents get there.

Because I have no faith that debates change that many minds. There’s very few pundits – and I doubt any that lacked an axe to grind – who thought then-candidate Trump was defeating his opponents, from Rubio to Clinton, in the debates. In particular, Clinton is thought to have simply overwhelmed Trump in their one on ones.

Yet, it was Trump who won the upset in the election.

Of course, there’s a million variables in play here, so how do we tease out the affect of the debates? Beats me. But it seems to me that the campaign rallies, the email campaigns, and the television ads have far more effect than debates that are, for the most part, on subjects on which a very small fraction of the electorate has any sort of expertise; their opinions may be welcome, but they’re not really relevant.

But, if Greta is right, then perhaps by making the debates more relevant in the manner which she suggests, maybe they’ll have some influence.

I just don’t have the faith.

Milliner:

1. a person who designs, makes, or sells hats for women.

Surprisingly specific. Noted in the Feedback column of NewScientist (4 January 2020):

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, for readers who have been led astray on such matters, is not a movie about pigeons. It is a movie about cowboys – that is to say, misogynistic, murdering, rootin’-tootin’ gunmen who meander about the 19th-century American Wild West in search of a credit sequence. It takes them a while to find it, but lordy are you relieved when they do.

It would probably have aged better had it been about pigeons, which is why, to make an abrupt segue, Feedback’s interest was piqued by news out of Las Vegas, Nevada, that a trio of pigeons were wearing cowboy hats.

The story gets more depressing the more you find out. It seems that some ornithological milliner glued the aforementioned hats to the aforementioned pigeons, perhaps to coincide with the National Finals Rodeo taking place in the same state.

Perhaps not quite properly used, but I confess I doubt there’s a word for someone who makes hats for pigeons, or even birds.

Long time readers know that I occasionally comment on the retraction of academic papers, often found through Retraction Watch (link on the right), looking at patterns and wondering about the management of academics and how the often economic rewards of fevered publishing affects the academic disciplines.

This disaster isn’t American, or even of the West. This fascinating WaPo article discusses management, mis- or otherwise, of academics in Russia:

Eight years ago, President Vladimir Putin decreed that Russia must become a leading scientific power. That meant at least five top-100 Russian universities by 2020, and a dramatic increase in the number of global citations of Russian scientific papers.

Now a group at the center of Putin’s aspirations, the Russian Academy of Sciences, has dropped a bombshell into the plans. A commission set up by the academy has led to the retraction of at least 869 Russian scientific articles, mainly for plagiarism. …

What went wrong? Many scientists blame Putin’s 2012 order, which provided greater funding but also led to pressure on scientists to churn out multiple papers a year regardless of quality, amid heavy teaching loads. …

“You have got this Potemkin village where universities try to report as many papers as possible, but nobody really reads those papers,” said Anna Kuleshova, ethics council chairwoman at the Russian Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers, the country’s largest scientific publishing organization.

Margaret Taylor of Lawfare is wondering about the role Chief Justice Roberts will be playing at the trial of Donald J. Trump – and whether he may find a way to permit new evidence to be introduced:

Here’s how this might play out: McConnell would introduce the organizing resolution and seek to pass it with 51 votes. If efforts to amend the resolution are unsuccessful, a Democratic senator would then make a point of order on the basis that 67 votes are required. And it would then be up to Roberts to rule on the point of order—presumably with the advice of the Senate parliamentarian, who will be at his side throughout the trial.

How Roberts handles this issue will likely be the first glimpse of what we can expect from Roberts in the trial going forward. He could rule with vigor—or timidity. Senators could accept the ruling—or any one senator could ask for a formal vote. Alternatively, Roberts could put the vote to members of the Senate without making a ruling or recommendation.

There has been a great deal of speculation on what role Roberts intends to play in the Senate trial. Will he engage actively, like Chief Justice Salmon Chase in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, or will he largely sit back and let the Senate do as it wishes, like Chief Justice William Rehnquist during Bill Clinton’s trial? Perhaps, thanks to McConnell, we may have an answer to that question as soon as the trial begins.

And Roberts has been riled in the past by President Trump. Will that influence a Roberts ruling on the matter? The trial starts on Tuesday, following the not-insignificant Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal holiday. This could prove very interesting, especially in the light of Professor Dorf’s suggestion that the Chief Justice may be a NeverTrumper.

The lawsuit to force the American government to start pursuing remedies for climate change, known as Juliana v. United States, has hit a roadbump:

A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a 2015 lawsuit by nearly two dozen young people to force the U.S. government to take more aggressive action on climate change, saying that the children did not have legal standing to bring the landmark case.

Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz wrote that the plaintiffs had “made a compelling case that action is needed” to slash the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. But the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the courts were not the place to compel such action.

“We reluctantly conclude, however, that the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large, the latter of which can change the composition of the political branches through the ballot box,” Hurwitz wrote. [WaPo]

I’m not sure I buy this line of reasoning, speaking as a non-lawyer. To my mind, the government is responsible for the safe-being of the citizens, and there appears to be little doubt that climate change is a threat, possibly existential, to the health of the citizens of the United States. It is traditional to bring suit against the government in order to compel it to fulfill its duties; that these two judges don’t see it that way is disturbing.

Suppose the United States suffered a substantial military attack by a national adversary, and yet the Executive refused to defend the country, and Congress refused to declare war, despite imminent disaster. Would a lawsuit seeking to compel action by the government be given the finger, as was Juliana?

If it did, it would prove the experiment in Democracy had failed. I see the dissenting judge has similar thoughts:

… then apparently it’s very important to get the latest security update.

Sources tell KrebsOnSecurity that Microsoft Corp. is slated to release a software update  Tuesday [January 14, 2020] to fix an extraordinarily serious security vulnerability in a core cryptographic component present in all versions of Windows. Those sources say Microsoft has quietly shipped a patch for the bug to branches of the U.S. military and to other high-value customers/targets that manage key Internet infrastructure, and that those organizations have been asked to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing details of the flaw prior to Jan. 14, the first Patch Tuesday of 2020.

According to sources, the vulnerability in question resides in a Windows component known as crypt32.dll, a Windows module that Microsoft says handles “certificate and cryptographic messaging functions in the CryptoAPI.” The Microsoft CryptoAPI provides services that enable developers to secure Windows-based applications using cryptography, and includes functionality for encrypting and decrypting data using digital certificates. [KrebsOnSecurity]

Cryptography is hard to do properly. More information at the link above.

But this dust-up does remind that I don’t often have to get a security update for my hammer.

And so we come to the end of the waiting period, controlled by Speaker Pelosi, between approving the articles of the impeachment of President Trump, finally followed by a party line vote to deliver them, and the actual ritual delivery.

Did the unexpected pause between approval and delivery actually work to the Speaker’s advantage? Since no one likes to take a politician at their word, most commentator’s have disregarded the Speaker’s contention that she wanted to understand how the trial in the Senate would be run, in order to select the ‘managers’ of the trial, and encourage Senate leader McConnell (R-KY) to run a “fair trial,” rather than a quick sham trial. Indeed, most commentator’s are guided by their divination of the Speaker’s “true” intentions.

Chris Cillizza of CNN thinks Pelosi gambled and lost:

But I was a little disturbed. First up, from Aaron Blake’s analysis of the Tuesday Democratic Presidential candidates debate in WaPo:

Ever hear of Evidence Based Medicine? We should have the same standard for government, regardless of who is running it. It’d dump pie-eyed dreamers like anyone who thinks the Laffer Curve has general relevance on their collective asses, for one thing.

And I suspect Democratic candidate, and non-participant in the Tuesday night Democratic Presidential Debate, Andrew Yang would be its flag-bearer, since he appears to understand that many problems will succumb to Big Data analysis. Or at least so I gathered from his appearance last night on The Late Show.

But he doesn’t have the experience or the charisma to win the nomination. I expect he’ll be remembered for injecting interesting and important ideas into the public discourse – or at least trying. Which I know is no great insight, but that, I think, will be his legacy.

Although he did throw his hat in the ring for a Cabinet level position, I noticed. I’m not sure he has the chops for that sort of thing, but we shall see. Given the knuckledraggers who’ve made it into Trump’s Cabinet, I’d say most three-toed sloths could serve and not be considered bottom-rung.

From AL Monitor’s Mid-week Middle East lobbying newsletter:

There seems to be a lot of reporting on Lev Parnas today, for example from Maddowblog:

In early October, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump “repeatedly involved” Vice President Mike Pence in the Ukraine scheme, including an instance in which the president “instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May – an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar – when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington.”

Yesterday, Rachel [Maddow] explored this in more detail with Lev Parnas, a Rudy Giuliani associate involved with executing the Ukraine scheme, and he said he’d communicated to Ukrainian officials that Pence would not attend Zelensky’s inauguration unless he agreed to announce an anti-Biden investigation.

The day after Parnas’ meeting with a top Zelensky aide, Pence’s trip was scrapped.

Parnas also said Vice President Mike Pence’s planned trip to attend Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May was canceled because the Ukrainians did not agree to the demand for an investigation of the Bidens. “Oh, I know 100 percent. It was 100 percent,” he said.

Asked whether Pence was aware of a “quid pro quo” around the visit, Parnas replied by quoting Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who said during the House impeachment inquiry: “Everybody was in the loop.”

Maddow said her show asked for comment from Pence and had not received a response.

There’s many more such stories out there.

While it’s tempting to take this seriously, and given the corruption of Trump and many of his nominees to posts all the way up to Cabinet level, in all honesty I should like to see some independent confirmations of Parnas’ assertions. Right now it just seems to be his word. Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler) agrees with me:

In short, for the last 18 months, Parnas has played a key part in creating the right wing echo chamber, one that — particularly because the addled Rudy is a trusted advisor — forms a key part of how Trump understands the world. One way Parnas did that was by recruiting Ukrainians who were, for very crass reasons, willing to tell Trump and the rest of the frothy right what they wanted to hear, even though it was assuredly not true. …

Last night’s interview [with Rachel Maddow] continued that grift, only he moved to spin an echo chamber for the left this time. He emphasized — and Maddow predictably responded — some of the key allegations Democrats most want to be true. Mike Pence is closely involved, Parnas revealed, and while nothing he revealed would amount to impeachable conduct, Democrats immediately latched onto the possibility it would be. Everyone was involved, Parnas confirmed, including Devin Nunes and Bill Barr. It was all about Biden, Parnas almost certainly lied.

Seeing as he’s under indictment, this would be fairly ballsy, but not unheard of. The Democrats and other Trump-despisers would be best advised not to have a collective orgasm over anything Parnas reveals until consilience^[1] is achieved.

¹ Consilience is a term for strong conclusion drawn from independent lines of evidence, usually used in science and historical studies.